Popagandhi

1. Teresa Teng is big in Chiang Mai. I hear it at my guest house in the mornings, I hear it in the restaurants I lunch in. As Z. says, “you munjens are everywhere!”
2. We munjens (yellow people) are everywhere. My Lisu trekking guide was part Chinese. The proprietors of the Fried Honey Chicken and Baked Shanghai Style Duck (Muslim) spoke perfectly crisp Mandarin to me. Just like how the Nepali/Hindi/Bengali-speaking owner of the hotel in Darjeeling (who had served in the Indian army) was in fact, Chinese too. And how I end up bargaining in Chinese or its dialects in the most unlikely of places. We yellow people are everywhere.
3. Reviewing our video clips, Z. pans the camera across the landscape.. “blue skies.. lush green terraces.. (at the moment I enter the frame) YELLOW person.”
4. Every Thai person we come into contact with keeps trying to help us pass off as Thai (who apparently can’t speak a word of it in Z’s case, or who speaks it very badly in my case), so that we enjoy local prices. In Cambodia they keep trying to pass us off as Khmer-Chinese, and even at present some other people are already planning my summer Nepali disguise. Looking yellow or off-yellow isn’t so bad after all.
5. Chiang Mai has an exclusively lesbian bar, aptly named La Femme Fatale. Somebody doesn’t think it’s a good idea to let me visit it.
6. My favourite buy from the Night Bazaar - a shirt that reads “Sorry Girls, I’m Gay”. At first glance it seemed like a gay man’s shirt, but Z. insists it could also mean my membership spells disaster and heartbreak for girls everywhere, and I should be apologetic about it.
7. It’s awfully tempting to catch a bus to Chiang Khong and slow boat into Laos. Or board a flight for Luang Prabang. Or bus into Burma. But there’s school to return to, come Monday.
8. Massage parlours with high speed internet connections are the best combinations invented since fish, water and rot (i.e. fish sauce).
9. Most importantly: after a certain point of Thai-style feasting, Somtam pet pet sounds exactly the same as “Sometimes FAT FAT“.
10. Z. now thinks I may be part Thai because she’s read in some literature about the Indian influence on Thai culture, and the symbolic importance Thais attribute to “sniffing” your partner as a sign of affection, and insisting they shower before going to bed; and my neverending obsession with fish sauce, of course. Maybe I’m just obsessed with food in general, but if part Thai sounds every bit as good as pad Thai, then I’m cool with it.

In Thailand I’m constantly eating and having massages, amongst other hedonistic activities. Now excuse me while I go for one more massage. I don’t want to go home.